Designing Innovation: Rose, Thorn, Bud and What if …?

In an effort to gain greater understanding of our stakeholders, the barriers affecting populations who lack food security and how these intersect with the many ideas our team has put forward, we did an exercise in class last week from Luma Institute’s, Innovating for People: Handbook of Human Centered Design Methods called Rose, Thorn, Bud. According to Luma, it is a process adapted from the Boy Scouts of America [1].

The exercise is best executed in person with a team using different colored post-it notes as a key. It helps to have the key visible from every part of the room especially if there is more than one group moving through the exercise.

Image capture from the book, “Innovating for People: Handbook of Human-Centered Design Methods” by the Luma Institute

Design Precedents

Prior to our class, our team did some research to audit and review design precedents that could inform our decisions as we narrow down our concepts and solutions.

A few precedents stood out for us:

Food subscription kits and delivery services:

Thrive Market

Hello Fresh

Blue Apron

Gousto (UK)

Plated

Fetch Rewards App

Fetch Rewards is the quick and easy way to earn rewards on all your grocery receipts. Simply scan ANY grocery receipt from ANY grocery store and earn points EVERY time you purchase any of the thousands of popular products in our app show up. That’s right, just scan any grocery receipt, and Fetch Rewards does all the work. Fetch Rewards is free, simple to use, and gives you quick rewards all on your mobile device.

Augmented Reality Apps

Based on these design precedents, we decided to take those ideas through the Rose, Thorn, Bud method based on our interviews, research, and personas. Below is our exploration for Apps, Rewards App, Meal Subscription Kits, and a print campaign.

What if … ?

Professor Tran came by while we were exploring the rewards idea and as the conversation continued, the ideas started to merge together. We started to ask ourselves questions … “What if … ”

Our big “What if …” included merging the kit with the app idea modified to accommodate the fact that smartphones are most likely not common in underserved areas. Even then we asked ourselves, “What if we considered the evolution or progression of technology into the home?” Meaning, what if, at some point, technology entered the home. Could our idea, our solution, address interaction over time?

Meeting! Google Hangout

The RBT exercise gave us a bit more direction so I decided to get some thoughts out of my head and on paper.

I shipped this off to my team mates and we scheduled a meeting to figure out next steps.

We knew we wanted to focus on health literacy but given the depth and breadth of the problem, how do we narrow it down? We knew students and teachers (schools) would be our core audience.

Storyboards

We came up with three storyboards based on our three personas:

Teacher

Student

Urban Farmer

1. Anna, an urban farmer, gives a group of students a tour of her urban farm and shares with them all the different types of food she grows plus fun facts about how food gets to the store.

2. Inside her barn, Anna teaches the kids about food choices and how these foods help different parts of the body.

3. After, Anna offers students a taste test of the produce she grows, giving them a sense of all the different types of food that can be made with produce.

4. Anna gives their teacher an Education Kitchen kit (our working title). This version has an activity book, seeds, mini planters, recipes. She informs the teacher that there is an interactive layer to the activity book for use with a smartphone. As a bonus, Anna gives the teacher a basket of various foods.

5. The next day, the teacher gives her students a chance to plant the seeds from the Education Kitchen kit Anna gave her. They get dirty, plant seeds, and the teacher tells them one day they will take them home.

6. The students who are most excited about what they have learned share with their parents about planting seeds and give them recipe cards from the Education Kit asking them to cook together and passes along what they learned about healthy eating and food choices.

These storyboards are helping us gain more clarity about how people would use our kit which we have temporarily named, “Education Kitchen”.

We’ll see where this takes us …

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This is Part 7 in a series documenting my learning experiences developing a solution to address food deserts, food security, health literacy, and health for populations. This project is part of our Designing Innovation course with Professor Lien Tran at the University of Miami, School of Communication. I am an IMFA (Interactive Media Master of Fine Arts) candidate.